


Behind Door Number Three

by freudiancascade



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, badass minkowski, eiffel gets in trouble, standard issue hephaestus mind screw, the world's worst song mash-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:22:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudiancascade/pseuds/freudiancascade
Summary: Officer Eiffel finds himself trapped behind a door that doesn't exist, stranded in a part of the station that wasn't there three hours ago. With Minkowski unable to reach him and no radio contact from Hera, he quickly finds out that his situation might be far more dangerous than he initially thought.Plus, the war of the stupid ear worms, Standard Issue Hephaestus Mind Screws, exactly when we’re allowed to die, and savouring the small victories.





	Behind Door Number Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tillunwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillunwish/gifts).



> Dear tillunwish, I hope this scratches your itch for an Eiffel and Minkowski adventure! Set back in the good old days of season one, when everybody was a little more ridiculous and Eiffel still had fingernails. All the love to my betas, for turning this into something coherent.
> 
> Enjoy, and Happy Yuletide!

The Hephaestus was a closed system. Literally, an airtight tube floating around in the void.

So it really should _not_ have been possible to keep getting himself lost. Eiffel pounded halfheartedly once more on the door that had sealed itself shut behind him, and then finally gave up yelling at it and turned to survey the barren -- _and completely fucking unfamiliar_ \-- hallway in front of him.

Maybe it was the fact that this was the Hephaestus that made it more plausible; out here, nothing was too absurd. He pressed his palm to the cool metal of the wall, his gaze shifting across the long and empty space that stretched before him. At the far end an unfamiliar airlock gleamed, all brushed chrome and safety signs that cited various line items from Pryce and Carter without actually giving any helpful information (like, say, the actual text of those lines). He wondered if Minkowski had put them there. 

On earth, it was always a lot simpler to tell exactly where you were. Places, times, the concrete things that made up an awareness of a self outside the body, of a world and one’s own tiny place in it — all very nice things to know, and something Doug had never really thought to be grateful for until they were gone. Living in deep space was like driving down a road at midnight, out in the country when the clouds had painted the sky low and there was nobody to maintain street-lamps and sure, the headlights flashed against the stripes on the highway and the engine rumbled and the radio kept twisting in and out of tune, but really, you may as well not be moving at all. That was what it was like, navigating the Hephaestus every single damn day, all the trappings of momentum with none of the reasons to care. It was walking into a corner store at the three in the morning to buy a pack of smokes, everything illuminated with garish fluorescence, a small bubble outside of the normal flow of the world. Or the moving floors of an airport at sunrise or sunset, carrying you to somewhere that was neither here nor there. The penumbra of the shadow, the messy place where it was neither light nor dark, and none of the edges were defined in any meaningful way.

He wasn't used to it yet, not by a mile, not by five hundred miles, not by a thousand miles, not by that stupid Vanessa Carlton song or by that Proclaimers song. And now those two tracks were going to be warring over which one would be more stuck in his head for the next few hours, thanks a lot, Doug’s jerk brain. Thanks a lot.

Life on the Hephaestus was a whole lot of nothing, and it made it a lot more difficult to tell when a whole lot of something was going to come barrelling towards them at mach speed and with every intent of ruining their day. If the nearest liquor store wasn’t an absurd number of light years away (he knew exactly how many, sure he did, he distinctly remembered being in the room while Hilbert did that math, anyways), it’d be a damn good excuse to drink. As if he’d ever needed one of those --

\-- no, this was why bad things kept happening to him, maybe he should just try fucking focusing for a change. There was a hallway here now, and there hadn’t been when he’d floated down this way approximately six hours ago, and he'd somehow gotten locked in. Maybe Hera was messing with him. Maybe she was mad at him again? He couldn't think of any reason why she would be, he thought he'd been on great behaviour over the past little while, but then again, he'd never been a good judge of that kind of thing. Eiffel breathed out hard between his teeth, letting out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan, and then resigned himself to popping the seal on this lovely new can of worms.

“...Heeera? Are you there?!"

No answer. The duelling ear-worms kept up their death match through his head, and he winced.

_"...Making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass_

_And I would walk five hundred miles_

_And I would walk five hundred more..."_

“Oh, come _on_. Hera? Hera, are you there?”

Still nothing. Doug kicked the wall, sending the echoes of the impact ricocheting down the corridor and himself spiralling feet over head down towards the airlock. 

_"...Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles_

_To fall into the sky..."_

“Oh, for the love of -- this isn’t funny, Hera!" He flailed his arms out, caught the other side of the wall, steadied himself back upright. "Come on, Hera, talk to me! Whatever I did, I'm sorry, okay?”

"What did you break now, Eiffel?" A female voice, not the one he was looking for but damn, in a situation like this, he'd take it. Minkowski sounded dry and exasperated, but that was pretty much her default state of being anyways, so he seized on the contact with a flood of relief.

"Oh, thank goodness, Commander! It's you! Is Hera on the fritz again? Couldn't get through to her just now, and I wasn't sure -- she maaaaay have been ignoring me on purpose."

"No, she's -- yes, Hera, I _know_ \-- she's right here, and I'm going to dig deeper into exactly why you think our mother program may have a reason to be mad at you in just a moment. You're the one who's gone fuzzy, Eiffel, I can barely copy you. Where are you?"

"Uh."

" _Uh_?"

"Uh. I was hoping you could tell me? Listen, I took a left out of Engineering and there were _three_ doors on the right." 

Minkowski paused. Eiffel could hear keystrokes on the other end of the line, and then she spoke again. "That's not -- there's only two doors down there. ...I know, Hera, I'm looking at the schematics now. Check in with Hilbert, please, see if he's slipped Officer Eiffel any more hallucinogens lately."

"I'm not hallucinating! Well, okay, maybe I am hallucinating, but look, I'm definitely _somewhere_! I went through the new door to see what was up, and then bam presto, it swung shut behind me and your boy got locked in. Didn't even get a chance to Indiana Jones my way outta here. So if you could get Hera to pretty please let me out, I'd be reaaaaaaaally grateful."

"She says she can't. Mostly because that door you're talking about _doesn't exist._ " 

"Well, then, we've got a definite problem. Listen, can you pretty please come down here and let me out yourself, then?"

"I was just down there three hours ago, _there is no third door,_ I -- oh god damn it, Hilbert says it's not hallucinogens." She sighed like the weight of the world had settled itself on her shoulders. "I'll be right down, then. Sit tight. If I find out you're just messing with me, Eiffel, I'm going to make sure you regret ever being born. Clear?"

"Crystal, Commander. See you soon."

\--x--

"Maybe -- maybe we're both hallucinating?"

"That's. Not. Helpful. There has to be a reasonable explanation. Hit the door again? Square in the center?”

Eiffel obligingly thumped against the brushed metal with the side of a closed fist, and heard the sound echo back on the other side of the line. _Thud, thud_. “Maybe it’s just another Standard Issue Hephaestus Mind Screw?”

“That’s not helpful, either.” Minkowski echoed the gesture, hitting back against the empty stretch of hallway in front of her. _Thud, thud._

“I’ve got you, loud and clear,” Eiffel said glumly, crossing his legs and floating in midair. His gut rumbled. “Did I mention that I was on my way to dinner before I got stuck in here, and I’m hungry?”

“I just want to find a way to get you out of there without having to blow a hole in my ship. Shut up and let me think.”

Eiffel sighed, slid down the wall. “Sure thing, Commander. I’ll just….chill out here, then.”

Another rumble, this one lower and louder.

“Amazing,” Minkowski said dully. “Even your stomach can get on my nerves on command.”

“Uh. That….that wasn’t me.”

“Sure. Listen, I’ve got an idea to get you —”

_Thud, thud._

She swore. “Oh, for god’s sake, cut that out —“

“That wasn’t me either, Commander! It was coming from — oh damn it all, it was definitely coming from that airlock?!” He dropped to a whisper. “That probably-connected-to-deep-space airlock chamber?”

A beat of silence while she processed that information.

And then everything happened at once.

“Eiffel, take cover!”

“There’s nowhere to —“ he began, but she wasn’t finished.

“Hera, do we have any atmospheric fluctuations that would —“ Minkowski continued, her voice shifting into a tone that Eiffel privately referred to as _About to Kick Ass Mode_. If she weren’t on the other side of a locked not-a-door, it would have been very reassuring. Instead, the communications officer pressed his back against the not-a-door, reaching down and patting his person in hopes of finding something useful to fight back with. 

_Thud-thud-thud-thud_.

“THOSE ARE FOOTSTEPS!” he squeaked, head snapping to the ceiling to track the noise as it came closer. Hands came up with nothing, and he raised them in front of his face. Squared up into a pair of fists, as though that would do him any good against any number of deep space horrors. “Commander, I —“

“Sit tight, Eiffel, don’t panic!”

“Little late for that, Commander! It’s above me, it’s walking, oh god, I —“

“Eiffel!”

He shrieked, loud and shrill, and the line went thick with static. Minkowski swore, kicking off the wall. “Hang on, I’m getting you out of there _now._ ”

Something on the other side of the line screeched, mechanical and shrill and loud like an old-school fax machine, and Eiffel’s yelling came through for just a moment in the aftermath, making her ears ring.

“Commander, it’s right above me, ohmygodImgonnadie —!“

“You are _not_ allowed to die, Eiffel! Not until I save your ass and murder you myself for getting into this mess, do you copy? What do you see?” 

The line broke up again and she pushed against the wall to take the corner at speed, whipping her body in line to keep balanced as she shot like a torpedo through the station.

“The airlock is opening?! I don’t —“ More crackles, and then, “—Empty Man?!”

“Eiffel, stay where you are, I’m coming. Keep talking!”

“I can’t —!” he yelled, and then the line went dead.

—x—

Whatever was on the other side of that invisible door, she definitely wasn’t going to go into it unarmed.

Out of breath and strung taut with adrenaline, Minkowski paused on the other side of the silent corridor with the largest gun in the armoury in the holster at her hip, a baton strapped to her leg, a pistol-grip drill in her hand, and — most reassuringly — the familiar feeling of her favourite harpoon gun weighted against her shoulder. 

She lifted the drill and powered it up, considering. Given that Eiffel had been tapping in the middle of the door, she could probably expect the sliding mechanism to be —

— yes, there. With a loud whine, the machinery caught against something electric, and created a spark —

— a mini fireball erupted, ready to catch into a wild explosion, but she was ready for it. Pulling the drill back with a firm tug, she pressed a foam fire extinguisher to the hole and blasted it, singeing the hairs on her arms in the process.

The door, with the internal control mechanisms shot, fell helplessly open. 

Minkowski didn’t have the time to savour the victory. She advanced down the empty hallway before her, harpoon weighted in her hands. At the far end, an airlock chamber sat with the door half-ajar. Beyond it was dark, a tangle of glowing wires and machinery dangling from the ceiling. 

Eiffel was hovering in the middle of that chamber, as far from all walls as possible, his arms splayed protectively in front of his face. “It’s above us!” he hissed, lowering his arms to meet her gaze, his own face drawn with terror.

Minkowski stepped forward, listening. _Thud thud thud_. That same footstep sound, and there, in the corner, on the ceiling behind Eiffel, movement in the dark.

She raised the weapon and sighted down the long barrel. Eiffel yelled and turned, following the direction of her shot, and she groaned before calling out, “DUCK!”

He stopped mid-turn and pressed himself flat to the floor. Didn’t think about it — heard her command, and dropped like a stone. She was almost proud of him, listening to common sense for a change.

She fired.

Sparks shot out from the metal contraption that had been creeping up on her communications officer, and Eiffel squeaked. 

A small drone, suction pads rotating wildly on the underbelly of it, fell backwards out of the tangle of machinery with a whine. The harpoon stuck up at a right angle to the body of the machine, and the drone went dead.

Minkowski’s chest heaved as she lowered the gun. “Would you say. I was crazy. If I said. That….doesn’t look an awful lot like an Empty Man?!?”

Eiffel whimpered, presumably in acknowledgement. She took a deep breath, studying the drone. Floated forwards and removed the harpoon from its side with a grunt, staring down at the twisted metal chassis.

And then kicked it, twice, for good measure.

—x—-

That evening, or what passed for evening in deep space, Eiffel folded his hands around the packet of hot water, tried to pretend it was a mug, and exhaled.

Of course his drink tasted like ass, like it came out of the plastic tubing of a dispenser that nobody had been able to clean since Hilbert had “accidentally” oxidized some chemical concoction on the manual back in the first week of the mission, but it was better than drinking seaweed. Doug had to believe that. Sometimes, it was the small victories that counted.

“Hera finished going through the programming of that drone you so gracefully found,” said Minkowski from the doorway of the mess hall. Eiffel turned, gesturing for her to come sit beside him in front of the long window that stretched across the length of the room. She obliged, perching more than sitting, and hooking her ankles against the bottom of the bench to stay down. The red light from the star illuminated her tired face, and Eiffel wondered briefly how much trouble she was going to get in when — or if — their superiors ever found out she’d put a new hole in the station. At the very least, the paperwork was going to be a nightmare, and he was briefly but profoundly grateful that nobody trusted him enough to do it. “Guess it’s part of an old radiation scrubber system,” she said. “Hera said it makes that walking sound with suction pads, keeps it anchored to the outside of the station in a storm. That’s why it activated way back during the Empty Man fiasco, trying to clean the Hephaestus from the outside.”

“But why was it _there_?” he asked, wrinkling his nose and slurping his hot water.

“Hera figures they walled it off when it got too laden with rads to be safely kept where the crew would be tempted to scavenge it for parts. Which is why it scrambled our communications. No clue why the concealed door opened for long enough for you to find it, probably an electrical short. I’ve got her running diagnostics now.”

Eiffel had choked several sentences back, and only now cleared his throat enough to gasp out, “Radioactive?”

She waved a hand. “I think you’re fine. I want you to check in with Hilbert once you’re done here, to be sure you’re fit for duty, but Hera says it was sealed off as more of a precaution than anything else.”

“Aww,” he said, trying to regain his composure. “You mean, I’m _not_ going to get superpowers from it? Too bad, that’d have been cool.”

Minkowski nudged his shoulder. “Maybe next time. Hera’s done with the drone and I think she wants to keep it as a pet, but seeing as I speared it with a harpoon I’d really feel better if we _vented it into deep space before it starts leaking enough radiation to kill us._ ”

Hera made a small sound, because of course she was listening in. She was always listening in, even if Doug always wanted to give her at least the appearance of privacy.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, tilting his head up to face her surveillance camera and offering a sheepish grin. “Maybe next time, we’ll find you a lil robot buddy that _won’t_ make us all glow in the dark.”

“I’d like that,” Hera said primly.

The three of them sat in companionable silence for a long moment, watching Wolf 359 continue to burn in perpetual sunset.

“Commander?”

“Yes, Eiffel?”

He took a deep breath, steadying himself before blurting, “Thanks. Like, I know I probably wasn’t actually gonna die back there, but you still came through for me in a big way, and it — it means a lot.”

She was silent for a long moment, probably trying to tell if he was being serious or not, and then evidently decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Patted his shoulder for a second time, answered simply, “You’re welcome.”

It shouldn’t have been possible to feel steady in a tiny metal tube in the middle of outer space, in a space that wasn’t really a space at all. After all, you could only ever tell where you were in relation to the bodies around you. And right now he was just going to have to suck it up and find a way to deal with living somewhere neither here nor there. With being caught in the penumbra of the shadow. With being constantly on the knife’s edge, even if nothing was coming for them through the dark. 

At least, nothing was coming for them through the dark _this time_.

Beside him, Minkowski closed her eyes and tipped her head to feel the warmth of the sun on her skin. Eiffel nursed his hot water, momentarily contemplating his own tiny place in the universe and the Commander he was trusting to keep him alive inside it.

Maybe, just maybe, he knew where he was after all.


End file.
